


Names forgotten and reinvented

by kafferosterier



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: M/M, Time Travel, a hint of max and daniel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27595351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kafferosterier/pseuds/kafferosterier
Summary: One minute he is, and the next he is not.Charles Leclerc and time traveling.orSebastian Vettel and being immortal.
Relationships: Charles Leclerc/Sebastian Vettel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Names forgotten and reinvented

It’s always been like this.

One second, he’s Charles Leclerc, older brother of one and younger of one. He lives in Monaco by the sea, and his father is a racing legend, just like Charles is to become one. 

The next moment, he is still Charles Leclerc, though not really. Because who are you, when you’re not born yet?

_A freak?_

_A paradox?_

_A time traveler?_

It’s always been like this. 

One minute he is, then he is not. 

**-**

When the familiar tingle in his stomach begins, he never knows what to expect. When the world closes, and then opens again, there’s no way for him to know if he’ll still be in the same location he travelled from, or if he’s left the continent altogether. 

He never knows what situation he’ll find himself in, if it’s a warzone shrouded in screams and gunpowder, or a quiet street bathed in morning sun, the only disturbance being the soft whistling of a young paper delivery boy. 

The only constant of his travels are Sebastian.

_Sebastian_ — who’s just passing by, who’s just about to leave, who’s somehow always waiting for him. 

Sebastain, whose golden locks shine in the sun, and whose soft, cherub-like features, always scrunch up into a smile when he sees Charles. 

Sebastian, who never grows older past 19; despite the centuries he’s lived through, despite the new and always changing identities he takes up ( _pawn, soldier, emperor_ ).

“I was just wondering when you would show up” Sebatian will hum, as Charles comes to sit beside him — on a fishing boat just outside Mexico’s coast, in a small graveyard in a war-torn Germany, or in a hungarian jail cell sometimes after the Ottoman’s siege of the city — and Charles will rest his head against Seb’s shoulder, and say that he was just thinking the same. 

-

His mother doesn’t like talking about Charles’ _condition_. Always frowns and sneers the moment the topic is brought up. 

At first, she didn’t even believe Charles when he told her of his travels, accused him of lying about his random disappearances or absurd stories of other times and places. Merely pursed her lips at the thought of him being anything else than a nuisance. 

Through the crack under the door, many excuses for his behaviour have drifted out of the living room, into the nursery where Charles has been sent out to during dinner. 

A typical middle child, his mother calls him. A boy with a too vivid imagination and too large a need for attention. 

“He probably feels left out,” his mother sighs exasperatedly, “now that Arthur is here.”

And the dinner guest expresses their understanding with hums and polite phrases, while the tears running down Charles’ cheeks had burned hot. 

His father had always seen it more as a game; would feign interest and play along in the same way he would pretend to understand the gibberish coming out of Arthur’s still toothless mouth. 

Sometimes, his father would take him to watch movies depicting the era Charles had just been sent to, perhaps in the hope of him calming down after being shown some special treatment. 

Unlike Charles’ mother, his father was better at hiding his discomfort as Charles angrily criticized the movie’s lacking credibility (“they don’t wear their armours like that, dad!”). 

He even manages a pinched smile when Charles’ history teachers marvel at his obvious interest in the subject (“he has even read up on the politics of the roman republic! He’ll definitely become a good historian in the future.”)

His parents don’t ask about his travels. Charles doesn’t tell. 

Sometimes, it’s as simple as that. 

**-**

Just like Charles cannot imagine his life without traveling, there’s no way for him to imagine a life where he’s not racing. 

It’s always been there, even before he became old enough to drive the kart himself; traveling to and from circuits, shouting at the TV at a particularly nasty crash, cheering on his overall-clad heroes from the stands as they lift their trophies over their heads. 

“It’s in us Leclerc’s natures” Charles father had once said, as he helped Charles into his kart, moments before the race began. “We are racers from birth.”

One rainy afternoon in Rome, out and about on a small sightseeing tour with his family, Charles finds himself suddenly transported to a first-class seat in Circus Maximus, watching a chariot race. 

Despite the fact that Charles watched races in speeds quadruple the pace of the horses down below, he finds himself hypnotised by the scene in front of him. 

The audience — how many there are, he will have to look up on the small information plaque when he returns to his own time — roars, as if making up for the lack of engine noise. 

The intensity of the masses washes over Charles, like a tidal wave, until he has become one of them — shouting and hollering down at the jockeys— whose names he’ll never know — to go faster, to persist. _Forza_. 

The chariot crossing the finish line first is steered by a man clad in red and gold. At the sight, the entire arena erupts in cheers and boos alike. 

The name “Sebastian” echoes across the grounds, chanted almost like a prayer, and Charles finds himself laughing, because _of course_.

It’s always Sebastian. Who else could it ever be?

Down on the ground, the winner lifts a single finger towards the sky. Triumph and arrogance in one single gesture.

_Like he’s born for it_ , Charles thinks, _like it’s his nature._

2013

After a disappointing fifteenth placement at the WSKA karting tournament, Charles leaves the circuit by foot, angrily stalking his way out from the arena.

One second, he’s fuming. The dumb face of Verstappen, who had bowed and gloated at the top step of the podium, playing before his eyes. 

Over and over again.

Bulldog cheeks and the broad mouth widened in a victorious grin. 

The next second, Charles is no longer walking on a perfectly paved road. Instead he is stumbling over a small path, no more than trampled dirt. 

He comes to a halt. Looking around, he finds that the small houses tucked into the mountains — that he had looked at from the car window, and imagined what type of people lived inside, when his father drove him to the circuit this morning — are gone. 

Gone is also the noise from the circuit; the roaring engines, the random music playing from rusty speakers, the shouting audience.

Instead, there is only the susurrence from the wind, blowing quietly through the trees. 

Once again, Charles sweeps his surroundings in the search of a familiar figure, a familiar mop of hair and his crooked teeth. 

When he finds himself to be completely alone, his stomach churns uneasily. 

The wind stills momentarily, and for a few, deafening, seconds, the world is eerily quiet. 

Too quiet. 

Before he knows it, Charles is running. Faster than he’s ever done before. He flies over the trampled earth. Runs back in the hope that going back will trigger his traveling, to where he came from, towards where he _knows_ the circuit is. 

Before long, he feels his heartbeat pulsating against his temple. In his chest, his lungs are heaving against the warmth and sudden exercise. Yet he continues forwards, the fear edging him on. 

He only notices the man when he is half past him; a sleeping form, rested against the trunk of a tree, the definition of peace.

Charles stops midstep — 

—and stumbles down towards the ground as his momentum takes over, still pushing him forwards. 

(Somewhere in the back of his head, Charles’ physics teacher is sighing — something with Newton…)

It’s his chin that first makes contact with the ground, the rest of his body following closely behind. The impact almost hurts more than seeing Verstappen climbing the podium once again. 

For a second, the world goes completely blank. Even the burning sensation in his head ceases. 

When he comes to it, Sebastian is peering down at him amusedly. 

“I just wondered when you were going to show up,” he says, and reaches out a hand that Charles gratefully takes. 

As they come to stand in front of each other, Charles takes note of Sebastian's appearance: a scruffed long tunica that goes past his knees, nothing but a pair of sandals below.

He reminds Charles of the roman soldiers in the Asterix comics, a fact that he promptly informs Sebastian about. 

Sebastian shrugs, “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“You do that” Charles mutters, not really in the mood for jokes, before walking over to the tree Sebastian had been sitting beneath. With a deep sigh, he heaves himself down on the ground. 

“Is everything alright?” Sebastian frowns as thim, as he comes to join him by the tree. 

Though the anger still flowing through Charles’ body runs hot enough to make his skin prickle, it still feels soothing to feel the warmth of Sebastian’s arm beside him as they sit together. 

“Yeah, I’m peachy,” Charles grits through his teeth, kicking at a small pebble with his foot. “I came fifteenth in the WSKA cup and life is splendid.”

Sebastian gives him an empty look, “is it racing you are talking about?” he asks obliviously. 

He’s playing dumb, of course. Charles knows, and his mind recoils at being treated like a child in need of solace. 

Yet he still plays along, and responds with “what else would it be about?”, knowing full well that the next sentence Sebastian says will be beyond the point of ridiculous. 

“I thought it was that competition where you talk with your mouth filled with fluffed confectionary,” Sebastian sniffs at him, as if wounded by Charles’ harsch tone, 

“The chubby bunny challenge?” Despite having expected the joke, hearing Sebastian describe the internet challenge that way, especially while being dressed in traditional roman clothing, forces a short laugh past his lips. 

“Yes yes, the rabbit competition,” Sebastian nods to himself, as if proud of remembering the rules, and now Charles cannot help himself from chuckling out loud. 

It’s with laughter in his belly and the sun shining in his hair that Charles asks him the words, “promise me you’ll race me one day.”

And it’s with yet another curious glint in his eyes that Sebastian hooks his pinky finger with Charles’, and swears on his mother’s life that he’ll do just that. 

\- 

Later, his dad will shout at him. His face painted a deep shade of red from anger and the still lingering fear as he reprimands his son for disappearing. 

“You could have been abducted!” he yells, one of his large hands clasped firmly around Charles’ shoulder, shaking him harshly, “you don’t know this place!”

Charles blinks back the tears. Wipes at his nose and finds it sticky from not yet dried blood. 

His side still tingles with warmth from where his body has pressed against Sebastian’s, a brief reminder that he never was in the danger his father speaks of. 

The safety of a promise. 

-

For Charles, there barely goes a week that he doesn’t meet Sebastian, perhaps only for a few minutes, or their eyes catching across a busy street, but still. 

In Sebastian’s case, their meetings are not that constant. The opposite really. 

According to him himself, it can go centuries without Sebastian ever catching sight of Charles. 

In those instances, when Charles shows up after a particularly long absence, there’s a hunger in Sebastian’s eyes as he looks at him. A certain way in which his arms immediately form around Charles, hugging him tight against his frame. 

With time, the hug becomes less awkward, as Charles grows taller and Sebastian doesn’t grow at all, until Sebastian no longer has to bend down. 

With even more time, it’s Charles towering over Sebastian. 

“When was the last time we met?” Charles will ask, cheek no longer pressed against Sebastian’s chest, instead now resting against the side of his head.

“Too long,” Sebastian whispers against his neck, breathing Charles in, “too bloody long.”

2014

It never fails to amaze Charles the many ways Sebastian manages to ruin his appearance: bowler hats, braided mustaches, and too long sideburns are only among a few of the questionable fashion choices he takes over the course of history. 

To his absolute horror, he finds Sebastian to outperform all of those fashion disasters in the 70’s, as he joins him by the bar in a New York nightclub. 

“Is that a blouse?” Charles gasps, as he takes in the pink monstrosity that Sebastian is wearing. 

Sebastian, who first chokes on his cocktail in surprise of Charle’s sudden appearance, lifts an amused eyebrow at him from behind the umbrella of his cocktail. 

“I stole it from Mick Jagger,” he states proudly, managing to only slur half of the words, “which means that it’s probably originally Bianca’s or something like that.”

He takes another sip from what Charles guesses isn’t his first drink of the night, at least if the red tint of his cheeks is anything to go by. Then he looks at Charles, with some sort of expectation from him. 

As if he’s waiting for something. 

It makes Charles’s skin crawl, truth be told. He doesn’t like the feeling of being expected to do something. Gets enough of it out on the track. 

He tries to lighten the mood a bit, divert Sebastian’s mind from whatever he’s waiting for Charles to do. 

“You look good, even though the blouse is hideous,” Charles tries to joke, but his voice comes out more like a murmur. Embarrassed, he diverts his eyes, and accidentally ends up staring at the small tuft of blonde hair that peeks up from Sebastian’s unbuttoned collar. 

Feeling how warmth spreads over his face, Charles quickly tears his eyes away from the sight, looks up, and finds Sebastian’s eyes already on him.

There’s defeat lingering in the set of Sebastian’s eyes, and Charles watches on as he opens his mouth once, twice, before any sound comes out.

“You think I’m pretty,” he finally breathes out, and Charles wonders if he imagines how the words come out angry, accusing almost. 

Lifting his glass towards Charles in a one-sided toast, Sebastian smiles with all of his teeth. 

“I’m pretty for a coward. Cheers.”

The glass clinks softly against his teeth as Sebastian throws the drink back with a grimace. 

-

“Where have you been?” Pierre demands angrily, as Charles emerges from the men’s toilet, still wiping his damp hands on the sides of his pants. 

“Uh—” Charles says, intellectually, and motions vaguely towards the bathroom, “in there.”

“You’ve been gone for forty five minutes,” Pierre states, “you can’t have been in there the whole time!”

Charles stops, and for just a moment, he thinks about coming clean to Pierre about everything. 

He bets that it would feel nice not having to lie for once. 

In fact, there’s nothing more that he wants than telling someone about the travels and _Sebastian_ and the fact that Charles has actually been in the hotel this entire time, just not in the right century. 

Then he imagines Pierre’s soft face twisting into a mask of mockery, as he sees Charles for the freak that he really is. 

Pierre will probably not even believe Charles, he’ll just think of him as a liar. 

A bad one at that. 

Oh, the twitter comments will be venomous. 

So, Charles makes up his mind. “The appetizer didn’t sit well with my stomach,” he lies, “it was an emergency.”

Adds a sheepish smile at the end, just to sell it. Buys Pierre a chocolate eclair, to make up for the long wait. 

Pierre tries to keep the sour face, still lets Charles taste his dessert without Charles even having to ask. 

2015

“Hi there” Sebastian says, as he quickly power walks past Charles on the street, “and goodbye!”

Charles manages a groan, as he shuffles to follow him. Back in 2018, he was just getting ready for bed, having only managed to stumble into his least oldest and most outstretched pyjamas pants before realizing the building around him had disappeared into a mere street corner. 

As he strains to catch up to Sebastian, the sun warmed road burns at his bare feet, and through the kaleidoscope of vendor tents and protruding rooftops, the sun peeks down at his naked chest with scalding precision. 

To say he’s miserable would be an understatement. 

Yet, as Charles looks at the all the people they pass by — all of them somehow dressed to the nine in thick woolen suits and double-layered skirts that reach the ground — there is the slight flicker of amazement, that Charles still manages to feel every time he travels to another time. 

As they weave through crowds, dodging under outstretched limbs, jumping over heaps of horse manure, Charles cannot help but feel grateful at the thought that he, out of all billion of more deserving people, 

Then Sebastian forces him to wait outside in the scalding heat while he attends a meeting of some sort, and Charles instantly feels more deserving of it all. 

“Come on Seb!” he whines, “Can’t I wait in the lobby or something?”

Sebastian gives him a slight shake of the head, “you’ve ruined my reputation enough as it is” he says with a grin. Then he’s off, the two tails of his expensive coat fluttering behind him. 

Charles sighs, then starts looking around for a place to sit. The building Sebastian has business in is a fancy one; actually more of a mansion, made of white marble. 

He finds his way into a luscious little garden on the mansion’s backside, complete with a few fruit trees and a small fountain in the middle. Charles slows his pace as he walks through it, comes to a complete halt as he reaches the small water source. 

The fountain bubbles happily, at him as if unaware of the human chaos outside its small hemisphere of peace. Perhaps it doesn’t care for the humans. 

Under a still blooming apple tree, Charles finds an empty bench, where he sits himself down. 

He closes his eyes. Just for a few seconds. 

Seconds turn to minutes and then hours, and when Sebastian shakes him awake, the sun has almost disappeared behind the rooftops. Charles reaches up a hand to rub his eyes, and realises with a start how his entire body has gone cold. 

As if he’s read his mind, Sebastian immediately takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over Charles.

“Sorry for taking so long.” he apologizes, before taking a seat on the bench. 

“It’s okay,” Charles shrugs, “It’s nice here, very calm.”

Sebastian hums in agreement, and then says something about the birds in the garden, or the trees. Charles listens, but doesn’t register the words.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches as Seb takes in the small garden before him, slowly and carefully, seemingly giving each and every little bird and blossoming flower the same amount of attention. 

As if they are all important. 

Even though they are no more than fleeting images in his never ending life.

Charles is hit by a worry, so sudden that it’s barely gone through his brain before it’s out on his tongue. 

“Seb,” he blurts out, quickly. Before regret catches up with him. “Do you ever get tired of living?”

Beside him, Sebastian stills. 

In the distance, a bird begins to sing, low and melodic. Somber.

(Sebastian probably knows what type of bird it is, Charles thinks, from only its melody.)

In front of them, the fountain is still bubbling, still joyous. 

“There have been” Seb begins slowly, hesitantly, “there are moments… when I despair.” 

A beat. Charles waits patiently, not even daring to breathe. 

“Sometimes, when those I’ve grown to love eventually grow past me, or those I wait for never show up,” here, he looks at Charles with a lopsided smile, “those times, I do think of life as a curse.”

He turns his head down towards his lap, to where his hands are folded together. 

As Charles watches on, he slowly stretches out his fingers, before clenching them into two tight fists, skin pulled taut over the bones of his knuckles. 

“But then,” Sebastian’s hands still once more in his lap, laid flat on the tops of his thighs, “I think of all those who never get to experience another day, who have been ripped from life too early.”

He looks up at Charles again, and the smile that so often ardons his face is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there is an urgency to Sebastian’s face, in the fold of his eyebrows and the way his lips seem to force out the words. 

“Perhaps, life is a ” Sebastian says, and the words ring clear and false through the cold air.

Charles looks down at Sebastian’s hands, sees how his skin is unmarred from all the years he’s lived. From all the wars and plagues and natural disasters he has walked unhurt from. 

He wonders if Sebastian has ever believed in those words himself. 

-

 _Immortality_.

Charles googles it late at night, while lying sleepless in bed. 

It’s only mere days after Jule’s accident, and the world is still standing still from the impact of the incident. 

At home, the phone is running warm with medical updates and condolences and inquiries. 

Inside Charles’s chest, though, all warmth has waned. For every beat, ice is pushed through his veins, and as he lays beneath layers and layers of blankets, he shivers. 

The bright phone screen lights up his bedroom, and Charles squints as he hurries to lower the brightness of it. 

He reads the definition twice, both in french and english: 

_Qualité, état d'une personne ou d'une chose qui est immortelle._

_Eternal life_ _, being exempt from death; unending existence._

Jule’s warm hands and even warmer smile comes to his mind, and Charles wonders how the slip of one mere tire could result in Jule’s existence becoming compromised in only a matter of seconds. 

In the dark, he thinks of how Sebastian carries the gift he’s been given like a curse. 

For the first time in his life, Charles hates Sebastian.

**-**

There are many things Charles is good at: driving, winning, pretending to not be bothered by scary movies when watching with Giada.

If there’s anything he’s rubbish at, though, it’s hating Sebastian. He’s forgiven him already by the next time they meet, only by the sight of his crooked teeth and too blue eyes. 

Not that Sebastian is aware of it. Neither of Charles’ (now long gone) anger, or the effect his mere appearance has on him. 

He’s too young for that. Not even a hundred years old yet. Has yet to understand that Charles’ will follow him everywhere and anywhere, crossing the span of four millenia together with him. 

In fact, Sebastian is still too young to understand that he will get to experience the next four millenia. 

It’s almost adorable, Charles finds, the questions that Sebastian asks him, about the future, about _himself._

More than that, though, it’s heartbreaking. Having to watch someone not yet at odds with his destiny. 

“Why me?” Sebastian asks as the evening draws nearer, and he pokes around the small fire that he has set up to cook the small rabbit he caught earlier in the night. 

They have taken shelter for the night by a small stream. A short stop on Sebastian’s never-ending journey around the world. Tied to a tree stands Sebastian’s horse and grazes the thin layer of green. 

Charles gives Sebastian a shrug, before meeting his eyes across the flames. The light of the fire flickers in Sebastian’s face, and it makes them look like endless pools of darkness. 

It suddenly dawns for Charles how much death Sebastian has seen. How much more he will see in the forthcoming four thousand years. 

He thinks of Jules, laying pale in the stillness of his room in the hospital. Thinks of how his chest cramped when he watched the crash on the TV, how the fear tingled all the way into his fingertips. 

How the grief still manages to catch him off guard at random times during the day — during racing, while making coffee, while watching a movie he knows Jules would despise but still would love to talk about afterwards. 

“Why me?” Sebastian repeats, more urgent this time. With his slender hands he bends a small twig, the still fresh tree fibers making it unable to snap in two and instead he has to rip the two pieces apart. With a frustrated exhalation, Sebastian throws them into the fire. 

Silently, Charles looks on as one of the pieces quickly catch on fire and shrivels up into nothing. The other end bounds against a larger piece of wood, and falls back out of the fire. Lays on the cold ground, still freshly green. 

He has to say something, but doesn’t know what. 

“I don’t know,” he confesses in the end, and his voice sounds weak beneath the crackle of the fire, “I don’t know why it’s you and I don’t know why it’s me.”

Unsatisfied with the answer, Sebastian sneers at him again. “You’re always so full of shit. You should get a _job_ ” — his tongue glides clumsily at the word Charles taught him earlier this morning — “as a liar, it would fit better!”

The words catch Charles off guard, and he looks up from the fire, forcing himself to meet Sebastian’s eyes again.

“What makes me a liar?” he asks, feeling every little hair on his arm stand up. Seeing Sebastian angry feels weird, and he cannot remember the last time it happened. When Sebastian doesn’t answer directly, Charles feels how his heart rate picks up, and he suddenly wants to get angry himself. 

The glare Sebastian gives him is cold as ice. Not even the flickering flames manage to warm his eyes up. 

“Don’t promise things you can’t keep.”

-

Truth be told, the encounter leaves Charles restless in the days to come. 

He keeps racking his brain after what he’s done that Sebastian is so angry at, but he cannot remember doing that. 

His performance coach asks him to stop going to bed so late, saying that Charles’ body needs to rest. 

Charles promises that he’ll try, but knows that the reason he cannot sleep is that the cold stare of Sebastian keeps haunting him, forcing him awake the second he manages to fall asleep. 

When the familiar tug of his stomach returns, Charles feels as if walking to his execution. 

He’s terrified. 

But then he finds himself being smiled down at by Sebastian, who’s riding the largest horse he’s ever seen. 

“I call her Betsy,” Sebastian says, with a large grin dirtied by crumbs from his chewing tobacco. There’s a soft twang of southern drawl to his accent, that anywhere else would sound ridiculous. 

His eyes are shadowed by the large cowboy hat he’s wearing, but Charles only needs to feel his gaze on his skin to know that Sebastian’s eyes are once again filled with warmth.

Charles returns his smile, “beautiful name, can I try riding her?”

**-**

After that, traveling goes back to normal again. And when Charles finds himself stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean, there’s only the normal church of excitement running through him at the prospect of an adventure. 

Then the fear returns, as the ship’s cook finds him hiding down in the storage room, and promptly attracts the attention of the rest of the crew. 

Apparently, Sebastian had taken to the sea somewhere in the mid 1700s, and over the course of only a few years, has managed to become one of the ocean’s most feared pirates, with one of the most renowned ships ever. 

The ship’s got as many as fourteen cannons, Sebasian tells him proudly, and the entire crew hollers at the idea of them being the scariest beings on the whole ocean. 

Charles smiles stiffly up at him from the chair he’s been tied to. From behind him, he can feel the muzzle of one of the crewmate’s guns pressing against him. 

As some of the pirates start discussing possible punishments for Charles, the situation feels as if it’s quickly going out of hand, and Charles feels how the sweat starts breaking out on his forehead. 

Sebastian only smiles though, and points out that one of the Majesty’s vessels has appeared on the horizon.

It’s a miraculous coincidence, Charles figures, as the crewmates rush to prepare the ship to take up chase.

It leaves him alone with Sebastian, too. Which is always a pleasure. 

“In the event of being this ship’s captain,” Sebastian states loudly, his voice sounding awfully official (almost german, Charles thinks), “I hereby decide to pardon you for your crimes.”

He ends the sentence with a quick quip of his knife, and the ropes around Charles' body slacken. 

Charles thanks him with a short hug, which Sebastian firmly returns. He smells of salt and sweat, and Charles breathes him in deeply before letting go of him. 

“Come here,” Sebastian says, and drags Charles by the arm toward the railing. “Look at that ship over there.” He points vaguely towards something in the horizon. 

Charles tries to follow his line of sight, but it is only when Seb lends him a pair of binoculars that he finds the ship, that looks almost double the size of Ferrari’s garage. 

“It’s huge,” he mutters, feeling a slight worry beginning to grow in his mind. 

“It certainly is,” Sebastian agrees appeasingly, “but it’s slow as a snail when it has to turn around. We’ll gain speed on her by being lighter.”

His words remind Charles of strategy meetings and training sessions, of messages via the radio and lap analyses in the media room. 

This boat chase feels like a hint of the future that is gradually descending on them, one technical development at a time. 

Or perhaps, Charles figures, he’s got it all wrong, and it’s actually the other way around. 

Maybe it’s Charles’ world that is merely a result of humanity’s deepest desires. 

The inherent need to always go faster. To win. 

He looks at Sebastian, sees how the smile grows in his eyes as he roars for his crew to work faster. They’ll soon have to start readying for the overtaking. 

It’s confirmation enough of his theory. 

In the back of his mind, he thinks of horse chariots rushing toward the finish line. Forty thousand people setting the Circus Maximus ablaze using only their voices. _Forza._

Thinks of one triumphant finger lifted to the sky. 

A promise made by the side of a roman road. 

2016

“If I said there’s something I’m not daring to do right now, would you say I should do it?” Sebastian suddenly asks him one late night in London. 

They’re sitting on the bus home from one of Sebastian’s many favorite clubs, after having listened to some obscure rock band that Sebastian swears will become huge. 

They were called something with stones, but Charles’ hasn’t heard of them in the 2000’s, so they might be headed towards an eternity of obscurity. He hadn’t really liked the singer, whose large mouth had been formed into a sneer for the entirety of the show. Blues is generally not his favourite type of music, but sung by some angry teenager and it becomes completely unbearable. 

"What are you talking about?" Charles asks and turns his head towards him. 

Finds that Sebastian’s eyes are already fixed on him. 

_Oh._

They maintain eye contact for too long, and Charles feels like the air on the bus somehow has grown hotter. He sticks out his tongue to lick at his lips, that suddenly feel too dry. 

Sebastian’s eyes immediately dart towards his mouth, before slowly trailing up Charles’ face to look him in the eyes again. A sly grin comes to graze his lips. 

_A cat waiting for his_ _prey._

And Charles all to willing to be hunted down. 

“I think,” Charles says, swallows before continuing. “I think you should do it.”

Sebastian’s lips are on his before he can even blink, warm and wanting. 

Charles responds without thinking twice. Crushes himself against Sebastian. 

Wants, _needs_ to get closer. 

Sebastian wastes no time and 

It’s hot, it’s sexy, it’s been in the making for four millenia. 

It’s the best damn minute in Charles’ life. 

Then he’s standing alone on the pavement in Barcelona, and his phone is vibrating from an incoming call. 

He’s half hard in his pants and Sebastian is somewhere in the 60’s, sitting on a bus headed nowhere. 

-

In the morning after, and the days and months to come afterwards, Charles can barely think of anything else than the kiss he shared with Sebastian. 

With bated breath, he awaits the moment he’ll get to travel next. When he’ll finally be able to return the kiss in full force. 

However, the days stretch on without Charles suddenly finding himself walking into another time period, without being able to walk into the open arms of Sebastian. 

He turns twenty in October, finds a grey hair laying on his pillow in November. 

Why did he never ask Sebastian if he’d ever visited him as an old man?

(Why did he not dare kiss him earlier, when they still had time left)

A year goes with Charles annoyingly stuck in the present. Feels more like eternity. 

2017

At the race in Austria, he drives to the best of abilities.

Brakes later for every lap, pushes the gas earlier. Doesn’t let his neck snap backwards. 

He earns himself a second place in the end. Only a second behind Verstappen. 

Not Verstappen anymore, he reminds himself. 

Max.

They are friends now, sort of. 

Max has grown into his cheeks over the years, Charles muses, as they spray each other with champagne. Still the same victorious grin, though. 

In the news, the reporters discuss whether or not Charles is world champion material. 

“He’s got the skills and the ruthlessness,” one says, “but has he got the hunger?”

The champagne tastes sweet like victory, but burns like jealousy in the back of the throat, as the camera flashes are shadowed by Max’s elbow. 

Charles tips the bottle backwards and drinks and drinks, relishing the taste. 

Later, at the bar, Charles finds himself at Daniel’s mercy, who wants to introduce him to the entire menu in only a few hours. 

“Drowning lessons” Daniel shouts over the music, and forces another shot down Charles' throat. It burns sweet, though this time only from artificial flavouring, and Charles lets Daniel steer his body so it sways along to the music.

When the song ends, Daniel leaves him to bounce over to where Max is, hanging his head on the dutch’s shoulder. In turn, Max rests his hand on the clinch of Daniel’s waist. 

Their touches look so natural, that Charles feels the last shot twist inside his stomach. 

Unwanted, the soft curve of Sebastian’s jaw flashes before him. The slight slant of his lips. 

If the reporters saw him now, they’d know he’s got enough hunger to win the championship three times around. 

Perhaps not the hunger of the right kind, but alas. 

He silences his wanting with another shot, and then another after that. 

Soon enough he finds himself throwing up outside the bar, once more at the orders of Daniel.

_Ironic,_ he manages to think through the thick haze of alcohol. 

\- 

It’s only when Charles no longer sees Sebastian on the regular, that he notices how Sebastian always has been there with him, in the present just as much as the past. 

How there are traces of Sebastian everywhere, in everything. 

Charles finds him in old photographs in history books, smiling at the camera with a knowing twinkle in his eyes, the image title describing him as an unnamed _companion_ or _soldier of an unknown squadron_ or _unidentified lover._

He puts on a movie and finds Sebastian in the background of the scene, with a woman on his arm as they pretend a conversation. 

He goes to art museums and finds Sebastian’s body in the sculptures. Bernini is the best at capturing him, and he perfectly manages to catch the slight slant of his mouth when he’s not talking. Donatello makes him too serene, absolutely missing the mean streak to Sebastian’s grin. 

Charles can’t even drive his car without wondering if it was Seb who influenced Enzo Ferrari himself to make the cars in red. 

After all, he once mentioned something about a stay in Italy with some car manufacturer. It’s probably not beyond him. 

During summer break, he goes to visit George in his apartment, and they drink orange juice on the balcony while they quickly deplete any possible topics of discussion.

In the lack of anything to say to each other, they decide to watch a documentary about the development of the car in the early 20’s. George had gotten the DVD for Christmas a few years ago, and hadn’t gone around yet to watch it. 

They sit next to each other on the dark leather sofa, as an official sounding narrator describes the small workshops of automobile production in the London areas. 

Charles almost screams into one of George’s fancy decorative pillows when the muffled, and probably added on in post-production, voice of Sebastian crackles over the audio, as his grimy figure appears on screen.

_“I'm no' a 'rained mechanic”_ Sebastian says, in a muddled dialect Charles barely makes out as English, “ _i jus' fiddle wi'h 'he bu''ons Shawn 'ere 'ells me 'o.”_

The narrator of the film translates Sebastian’s words, and then goes onto the process of mass production and rate of uneducated men working in the car factories.

George wastes no time in cheerfully exclaiming “that’s what I call cockney!”

“Cock-what?” Charles asks, confused. 

George promptly explodes into laughter, and then dives into a lengthy explanation of the different dialects of England. 

He even pauses the documentary to better explain. 

Charles simply nods along, avoids looking at the screen where Sebastian’s out of focus, but still clearly mischievous, eyes are taking up the entire screen. 

-

After a while, his memories of Sebastian grow fuzzy around the edges, as if they were more a dream than reality. 

With everything else happening: him stepping up to Formula One, his father dying, a fucking pandemic sweeping across the world, the memory of Sebastian has become more distant. 

As if small pieces of his mental images of Sebastian have been swept under a rug. 

He’s playing COD with Pierre and Lewis when the thought flits through his mind. 

A momentary wonder of what Sebastian’s laugh sounded like, when he threw his head back and just let it burst out, in the way that Lewis is doing over the tv. 

If he used to swear in french or german whenever he was focused on something, like Pierre does when he’s trying to outmaneuver the others. 

“Charles are you there?” Lewis asks over the microphone, somehow having realized how quiet it's been from his side. 

“yeah yeah” Charles responds quickly, blinking away the picture of Sebastian, “I got lost in thought.”

Pierre snorts, “thinking of a special some-oone” he teases in a sing-song voice. 

Charles protests incredulously, while Lewis lets his laughter free once more. It echoes throughout Charles’ head, not in the way Sebastian’s laugh did. But in a perfectly Lewis-like way. 

**-**

Lando calls him one night, the theme song of _The Office_ blasting into Charles’ bedroom, filling his dreams with weird sequences of Romain Grosjean shaking his head at him. 

Lando chose the ringtone for himself.

Charles answers after the thirteenth ring, angrily blearing up at the too bright screen. 

“What do you want?” 

“Mate,” Lando’s nasal voice comes through the phone, way too loud for Charles’ liking. “One of my followers sent me this picture from the—”

“Are you streaming?” Charles grumbles, swipes at his phone to look at the time. 

Quarter past three. _The witching hour_. 

“I do have some american fans,” Lando sniffs, and then there’s the soft rustle as Lando moves around for a bit. Then he seems to remember what he’s called for, “anyways! Look at this photo, it looks exactly like you!”

There’s a short delay, before the image Lando’s talking about shows up as an attachment to Charle’s text messages. 

It’s a picture of Charles in Portugal, clad in jeans and one of Sebastian’s jean jackets, that at the time was hugely popular, especially in combination with some radical patches. 

He’s standing in front of a red Ford, that if Charles remembers correctly, didn’t only win the race, but also made it successfully out of the subsequent car chase as the police found their location. 

With his hair brushed back, and the nike logo of his shoes being hidden from the camera’s lense, Charles looks almost blended in with the time period. 

Though the rectangular shape of his iphone in his left pocket is a dead giveaway, if you know where to look, that is. 

“mate!” Lando’s voice rumbles over the phone, “that’s you!”

“He’s clearly very attractive,” Charles responds amusedly, and savors the deep sigh of Lando, who’s clearly not satisfied with Charles’ contribution to the stream. 

“My chat says you’re a time traveler, they say they have the evidence to prove it.”

Charles chuckles lightly at the thought of the fans somehow finding out his secret, “yeah, I would love to be a time traveler.”

“Me too!” Lando exclaims, so loudly Charles has to remove the phone from his ear, and hold it a few decimeters away. “I would totally go back to the dinosaur era. I’d love to ride a tricera— “

Charles hangs up on him mid-sentence, and then puts his phone on mute. 

Spends the rest of the night tossing and turning. 

Finally falls asleep as the first strokes of sunlight peeks through his curtains, dreams of golden locks and endless possibilities. 

Wakes up to a text from Lando, asking if they can make his time traveling discussion into a weekly feature. 

-

He borrows the documentary from George ( _“I wanna show my grandpa…”)_

Finds himself late at night in the downstairs living room, replaying the few moments of Sebastian on the screen. 

Arthur finds him hunched over himself on the sofa in the morning. Standing above him, with a cup of coffee in his hand, he kicks Charles awake with a rough heel. 

“Is this the guy you’re pining over?” He asks, when Charles finally glares at him with eyes that are thick of sleep. 

Charles follows the accusing finger Arthur is pointing at the TV, where once again, the DVD has been paused at the grainy smile of Sebastian. 

Already done with the day, he turns around on the sofa, away from the TV and Arthur’s triumphant face. “Shut up.”

Arthur doesn’t. Is probably incapable of doing just that. 

“I mean,” his annoying voice cuts through the room, and the layer of blankets that Charles has put over his ears. “He is cute, though he looks kinda… scruffy. And how old is he?”

Charles turns back around just long enough to throw a decorative pillow at Arthur. 

Arthur dodges it without missing any particular effort, and the pillow sails on through the room. Charles looks toward it wistfully, already missing its soft support under his head. 

“He doesn’t look legal, are you preying on youngsters now, Charles?”

Turning around on the sofa, Charles presses his face into it’s back and screams. 

2020

The 2020 season takes up where it left off in Summer, and Charles finally finds himself back on the racetrack after a few torturous months. 

Feeling the raw power of his car come alive should be the best feeling in the world. 

Should feel like a starved man taking his first bite of food in weeks, the strangled finding his lungs suddenly expanding with fresh air, the smoker finding his abstinence soothed by the first taste of nicotine. 

Although—

Although there would perhaps be a better feeling, Charles painfully admits to himself. 

Seeing Sebastian for the first time in four years. 

But his stomach stays free from any prophetic churning, and he keeps opening his eyes to find the same scenery in front of him. 

As the race continues to come, Charles hangs his head lower for every time he finds himself outside of the points. Spouts random words in his interviews, thinly covering up his anger and disappointment in this year’s car. 

“He’s stuck with Ferrari for three years more, I wonder if he’s come to regret that,” Ted Kravitz says on the TV, and Charles feels bile rising in his throat as he watches it in his hotel room later at night. 

Pierre buys him a Chocolate eclair via a delivery app to cheer him up, watches him eat it over a zoom call. 

Even though each bite grows in his mouth, larger and larger until he feels like he’ll choke on it, Charles forces each and every piece of it down. 

Charles manages to swallow down the last piece with a gulp of water, quickly closes his mouth before it all comes back up again. In front of him, on the small computer screen, Pierre’s face slowly fills with relief at the sight of Charles eating something for once. 

Charles tries to give him a smile over the camera. Ignores the voice of Kravitz in his head. Inside of him, his stomach twists and turns. The world stays the same before his eyes. 

-

For the first time in 7 years, they’re racing at the Nürburgring, and though the circumstances are weird and the weather is shit, Charles actually feels hopeful for the race. 

It feels good to start the race from fourth position; the first time during the entire season that Charles hasn’t qualified embarrassingly low, and as the red lights first appear and then go out, he promises himself that he’ll make this race count. 

And, honestly, he does a good job, for the first 17 laps. 

Then it just goes awful, with Charles spinning out from the track at the fourth turn, straight into the barrier, while Albon, who was the one closest, continues onward toward glory. 

He barely has time to count the metres before the car makes contact — 

and then just continues rolling through a suddenly appeared field, that softly rises and falls irregularly under his quickly disintegrating tires. 

Charles curses— much more vulgar than he hopes he would have done with an engineer listening in— and then spends the next few moments trying to dodge his impending death on the most ill fitted track a Formula 1 car has probably ever encountered. 

He finally manages to come to a halt as the car crashes into an enormous rosehip bush, red berries flying everywhere. 

The engine screeches unhappily at the stop, and only quietens down when Charles reaches to turn the car off. 

For a second, Charles finds himself waiting for the “are you okay Charles?” from his headset. 

Then he realizes what’s actually happening, and he flails to rip out the steering wheel and to free himself of the confines of the seatbelt. Much more ecstatic than he’s ever felt for any of his four wins, he rushes out of the car seat. 

He leaves the helmet in the seat, as he takes to stand. 

Squinting against the bright sunlight, he surveys the land that one day will become the bane of Charles Leclerc’s 2020 Formula One season. 

Though he should feel irritated — at the crash, at his fifth position in the championship slipping out of his grip, of the extensive press work he’ll have to do to get out of his predicament — he cannot. 

The prospect of setting his eyes on golden locks and a smile full of crooked teeth overshadows any negative outcome of this. 

Looking around, he finds himself standing on a small hill, looking down at an even smaller village on the flat ground below. 

It seems to be early morning, as the sun has barely risen above the treetops. As Charles exhales the cool air, his breath comes out in short puffs of smoke. 

From his viewpoint, he can see how the villagers have all abandoned their activities down on the ground, and are all staring up toward him, toward the source of the sudden explosion. 

A group of young children are headed towards him, running up the hill despite the cries for them to fall back by their elders. 

As Charles watches on, he sees how one of the kids manages to outpace the others, making him the first to reach the top of the hill and encompass the smoking hot wreckage that is Scuderia Ferrari’s supposed pride and joy. 

When a pair of blue eyes fall on him, filled to the brim with thinly hidden wonder and amazement, Charles realizes two things. 

The first, how _young_ this Sebastian looks. 

And not in the way that Sebastian always has looked youthful with his golden hair and playful eyes. 

No.

This Sebastian looks barely fifteen, standing on knobby knees he’s barely grown into, and his cheeks are still adorned with the childish plushness that he’s yet to grow out of. His hair lies in a floppy mess on top of his head. 

(No wonder this boy’s face will be reimagined a thousand times over across the walls and ceilings of churches and palaces. Charles understands each and every artist. If he could draw, Sebastian would be his muse as well.)

Secondly, as Sebastian stares at him with eyes that will come to see mountains fall and oceans rise, Charles understands it all.

The realization doesn’t come as a sudden enlightenment, Charles’ has always known this somehow. Has always had this final puzzle piece, it’s only now he knows where it fits into the whole picture. 

  
  


“Hi Sebastian,” Charles breathes, “I was just wondering when you would show up.”

_That this is where it all begins._

“Who — who are you?” The question comes, Sebastian’s still pre-pubertal sounding oddly squeaky in Charles’ ears. 

Charles smiles at him, at the small scraps on Sebastian’s bare knees, at the small stain of something on his right cheek, at the decorative flowers woven into his wool tunica. 

This is where Sebastian has begun his life

“I’ll race you one day,” Charles says, without looking at Sebastian in front of him. Instead he turns his head around once more, to where a wall made up of rubber tires one day will stand, instead of the trees and bushes that cover the area right now. 

They’re standing just outside of what will become the fourth turn. Perhaps Sebastian one day will try to overtake him here, just like Charles had tried earlier, before going wide and crashing out. 

“In the future, we will race each other here, to see who’s fastest.”

Sebastian’s forehead crunches into a deep frown, “I don’t even know who you are,” he says, as if Charles’ identity is more complex to a boy living in the late stone age than the concept of racing is. 

Perhaps it is, if the way Sebastian had flown past the other children in his group is anything to go by. 

Charles is just about to step closer, to hug Sebastian or just get a closer look at him, to say something stupidly emotional, probably, when he feels the old familiar tingle in his stomach. 

His time is up. 

“Don’t be afraid, please.” He manages to say, before the world closes. 

When he opens his eyes again, the present comes back to him with a roar of engines and the clapping of the few in the audience. 

“Are you okay, Charles?” His race engineer asks him over the comms. In front of him, the halo looks a bit chipped from where it has scrape against the tires. 

“I guess” Charles mutters as a response, “yes, yes I’m fine.”

He’s more than fine, _spectacular actually,_ but that’s nothing the world needs to know. 

-

Throughout the years, Charles has many times been ridiculed for looking spaced out during press conferences; for staring out into thin air instead of reacting to the comments made by the other drivers. 

He’s never bothered with responding to any of the comments, mainly because he would be a liar if he said he was actually mentally aware of any press jobs. 

After all, press conferences are dull. 

Everyone keeps babbling words that nobody’s actually listening to. Not even the journalists asking the questions; they’re too occupied with spinning their own truths and stories. 

Charles would have to take out two weeks extra vacation if he’d actually start paying attention to the post race interviews. 

Perhaps he’d even take out some insurance for the trauma induced, that wouldn’t be much of a lie. 

The press conference in Dubai isn’t any different. Everyone’s busy firing questions at Kimi, asking him what he’ll do during his retirement. Mattia looks out over the room with a deep scowl, as he wards of every question about his choice to not renew Kimi’s seat for the next year. 

When he’s not being asked about who he’d like to have as a teammate, what with Ferrari’s second seat being empty and way too many possible replacements, Charles is focusing on the irregular pattern of the ceiling tiles. 

Not surprisingly, it’s a much more interesting pastime. 

He’s just started counting the number of rectangular tiles, when a journalist sends a question to Mattia. 

Charles doesn’t hear it, and barely registers anything of Mattia’s anwer, really. 

But then the name “Sebastian Vettel” rings through the room, and Charles is forcefully snapped back to the conference. 

“— as I said, there are many possible replacements for next year’s seat, and Sebastian is yet to prove himself as a safe choice. But he is part of the academy program and thus he is on our radar.”

The journalist thanks Mattia for the answer, and then someone else asks Charles a question. 

Charles doesn’t hear this question either, is too spaced out. In the end, the journalist gives up and the question is passed over to Mattia. 

He goes home directly afterwards. Spends the whole flight googling Ferrari’s youth academy. 

_Won Formula 3 in 2019. Became runner up in Formula 2 in 2019. He doesn’t have social media but it’s rumored that he owns a dog._

Charles steps out of the plane, grinning ear to ear. 

Thinks that the next season cannot come soon enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay yes I know, Charles' character is weird. Please forgive me, I'll try better next time, but I've been writing this since Eifel GP and just want it to be published. Sorry, folks. 
> 
> Title is taken from Richard Siken's Saying your names.


End file.
